


Cohabitation

by cadmean



Category: Control (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-13
Updated: 2020-09-13
Packaged: 2021-03-07 03:07:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,844
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26449762
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cadmean/pseuds/cadmean
Summary: It takes a while for Darling to see the writing on the wall.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 22





	Cohabitation

The assembly’s called as an impromptu, informal thing, but Darling’s been working under Trench long enough to know full well that the Director never does anything without having planned it _well_ in advance. It’s a good quality to have in a Director, of course, but it does also tend to make Darling’s day-to-day life startlingly difficult – because although Trench’s summons arrive in Darling’s office entirely without warning (thus, theoretically, enabling Darling to ignore them and leave him free to go about his merry way chipping away at the red sand formations that have appeared in a corner in one of the lower floors) they also somehow manage to thud through the pneumatic tubes just as Marshall steps into his makeshift office. (Darling would suspect that the two of them planned it that way, because it wouldn’t be the first time, but Marshall’s just as surprised as him when he opens up the tube and reads aloud its contents and so he counts it as a mutual loss.)

“Well,” Darling says after a moment, fidgeting with the empty container in his hands for want of anything else to do, “well. You wouldn’t know what’s important enough that the Director wants to drag us both back to his office, do you?” When he’s not immediately graced with an answer, he finally tears his gaze away from the tube and the missive (and the trickle of red sand piling up in the far corner of his container-office, which had not been there just three minutes ago) and looks at Marshall instead. “ _Do you_?”

Marshall only shrugs, her face (as it usually tends to be) an unreadable mask.

Peer pressure is a terrible thing and Darling is of course experienced enough to see it being aimed at him from a mile away, but also Marshall has honed that disappointed, annoyed ( _disappointenoyed_ , if O.o.P. 78-KE is to be believed) stare to perfection. And Darling, in the end, is only human.

“Give me three minutes,” he tells Marshall with a put-upon (and entirely justified) sigh.

She nods, and sighs in turn. But she does help him lock up his office, and when the red sand briefly wells up from underneath the doorsill before receding again she doesn’t mention it at all.

* * *

It’s not just him and Marshall that’ve been called in (and he shouldn’t have expected otherwise). Tommasi’s there in Trench’s office already when the two of them get there, leaning against a bookshelf and looking more annoyed with each passing breath, and Salvador’s only a few minutes behind Darling and Marshall. 

“Only missing the Director himself, then,” Salvador drawls as he nods at each of them in greeting. (His eyes linger longest on Darling, but for a change Darling genuinely can’t imagine why. Force of habit, perhaps?) “Why’s he called this meeting? I was busy.”

“Of course you were,” Marshall replies sharply, and Darling rethinks the complaint he was about to voice in sympathy.

They spend the better half of an hour bickering, and the next half in silence, each of them mulling over their own thoughts (or sleeping, in Tommasi’s case.) Darling thinks about the red sand and the red lights he sometimes sees shining around the far corners of a hallway (and how there’s something in his head that coils and shatters around itself at the memory alone), and he becomes so engrossed in theoretical eventualities that it’s only when Marshall forcefully lets the door of the office fall shut behind herself that he realizes that he’s the only one still there.

Trench never does show.

* * *

(Darling runs into him two days later, in the Cafeteria at three minutes past three in the morning. Trench offers him the coffee he’s just made, and Darling accepts it gratefully. They talk about their respective work loads, and how Dyl—P6 has been remarkably quiescent in his containment cell as of late, and they part with Trench casually inviting Darling on another exploratory mission into Slidescape 36.

Neither of them mentions the missed meeting. It’s not the first time it’s happened, these last few weeks.)

* * *

Trench makes good on his invitation a week after their late-night meeting. He comes striding into Darling’s office (actual office, after having been forced to abandon his container in the lower floors due to mold concerns, and how’s that for untenable working conditions, Underhill?) with a manila folder under his arm and his Service Weapon securely stowed away in its holster on his hip.

“Darling,” he says, and Darling has to pretend he hasn’t been following his approach over the security monitors for the last minute as he looks up to greet him with a nervous little smile. “Are you busy?”

Darling never lies, of course (no point in it really, not inside the Oldest House) but over the course of the past few days he’s become increasingly fond of obfuscating the truth, where his Director is concerned.

“Always, Director,” he therefore tells Trench, “always all those little projects to follow up on, and then, well, the larger projects tend to intrude on whatever time I’ve left in between! I wouldn’t have it any other way, of course, because it’s so fascinating to see what—“

Trench cuts him off with a raised eyebrow and an almost annoyed-looking twist of his head. (The crystal-sharp awareness rears its head again at that, a slow lazy twist that stings behind Darling’s eyes. Trench has never been annoyed with him before – exasperated, certainly, but never annoyed. This is entirely new. Darling doesn’t like it all.) “I hope you’re not too occupied to accompany me on a brief walk?”

It’s not really a question, of course, and Darling’s not yet desperate enough to pretend otherwise. He sets down O.o.P. 78-KE back inside its Black Rock containment box ( _blocx_ , 78-KE helpfully provides before he can successfully close its pages) before answering, “Of course not, Director. Lead the way, if you would! Ever onwards.” A slight pause. Because he needs a few more seconds to think how to best go about this, not because he actually needs to ask. “Where are we going?”

* * *

They end up in the Projector Room, of course. (Where else? There is no avoiding it no matter how dense he plays at being.) Darling keeps an eye out for strange red lights along the way and he sees plenty of them glowing around far-off corners and from out of disused offices, but Trench doesn’t seem to notice the dreadful shine at all and so Darling, too, keeps his mouth shut. (A difficult endeavor, to be certain. But he manages.)

Trench doesn’t actually turn on the projector, but he speaks to Darling as if it were steadily rattling along on the little pedestal between them. They discuss Slidescape 36, and (as always) the potential for more slides to be hidden still beneath the trash they brought over from Ordinary, and (not as always) about what scapes they might be able to reach, through those other slides, should they ever be found.

“The potential for discovery is _astounding_ ,” Darling says, excited despite himself and the unease he’s still not yet managed to shake. “Imagine—with just Slidescape 36 we were able to discover Hedron. So what else might have been hiding beyond the other slides? A world like our own? One entirely unlike ours? Perhaps even a link to the Astral Plane, so much easier to access if we didn’t have to send out Astralnauts but instead could just send the regular ranger teams! There would be so much less potential for things to go awry, much less danger too of course, and the samples they could bring back—“

(The slides will never be found. Nothing remains. Nothing but ash. They made sure of it.)

“What about Hedron?” Trench asks suddenly (and catching Darling off-guard so thoroughly that he almost crushes Slide 36 in his fist), voice nonchalant and all the more threatening for it.

Darling slowly uncurls his fingers. No harm done to the slide. “What _about_ Hedron?” (What about Hedron, yes?)

A moment passes in silence. (Some moments stretch to eternity.) Then Trench shrugs. “Nevermind, Darling.”

And perhaps it’s just a trick of the light (lies, lies, if there is one single constant across all planes it’s that the light plays no tricks), but for a moment there Darling is certain that he sees an awful red glint reflecting in (emanating from) his Director’s eyes.

And then, just as Trench before him, he shrugs it off.

(Cowards. The both of them. But an admittedly useful trait to have, in these circumstances.)

* * *

Darling doesn’t sleep that night. Red threatens to fill the space behind his eyes whenever he dares close them for too long, and so he doesn’t dare sleep the next night, either. Or the night after that. Or—

On the fifth consecutive day of avoiding his various offices, Emily Pope tracks him down near Black Rock Quarry (it is peaceful, there. Quiet) and all but threatens to call up Marshall if Darling doesn’t head for a sleeping cot right that instant.

“We’ve all had our share of sleepless weeks,” she says as she gently (but forcefully. What would 78-KE call it?) pushes Darling towards the sector elevator, “but those have all been in the name of scientific discovery. What are you so keen on discovering, Dr Darling?”

He doesn’t have an answer, of course. (And he wouldn’t tell her even if he did.)

“No scientific breakthroughs waiting just ahead, I take it? Then, Dr Darling, you truly have _no_ excuse. Go on. I’ll shut the door behind you, and I’ll make sure no one disturbs you for the next twelve hours at the very least.”

And she does.

(She truly is too good to him by far.)

(But it's much too late, now.)

* * *

(The sharp-coiled resonance filling up the empty spaces in between what makes Darling recognizably Darling twists, and it slithers, and then blossoms into a shape that makes it clear that enough is enough, and it says,)

“There is something you need to know.”

(Its voice is no voice at all and yet crystal-clear regardless, and it can feel Darling jerk awake at the heavy echo of the not-sound as it presses the first few notes of its message into his very being.)

“It looms. It comes. Not far off, now. A threat. You need to prepare yourself. The Bureau. Those we can yet save.”

(And Darling, not even bothering to roll over onto his back, blinks owlishly at the dark ceiling of his room for a moment. He’s very calm, laying there, but they’re too close now. There’s a tingle of soft apprehension running through him he can no longer hide from it, and it can feel the way he’s keeping a tight hold on himself so as not to immediately start shouting his excitement out loud enough for the whole department to hear.)

“Ah,” (he says, voice still rough with sleep it shouldn't have dragged him out of,) “there you are. I was wondering when you’d finally start speaking.”


End file.
